


goodnight with lady day

by babyyaga



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: But mostly angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Nightmares, Post-Heartbreak, Retribution Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-31 02:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21048776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyyaga/pseuds/babyyaga
Summary: annie albright has a nightmare and then punches ricardo.__i'm serious about the medical torture.this is post thing-that-isn't-villain reveal, so. spoiler zone.i reference a few songs and poems, so i included footnotes, like a jackass.





	goodnight with lady day

Here is tonight’s nightmare: 

She is tied down so tightly she can hardly breathe. Thick strips of plastic are tight across her chest, ribs, arms, hips. This is a delicate process. They can’t risk her squirming. Her head is practically screwed into place.

A lot of things broke when she hit the pavement, a lot of things that still aren’t quite fixed. Things that will never be fixed. And the straps dig into the still-bruised skin, into still-healing cracked bones, every time she inhales. It would have been easier to put her out for this. There would’ve been no chance of her moving, no need to strap her down. But they don’t. They need to know whether they’ve fucked something up in her brain, so they need normal function to compare it to. Normal, awake function. And maybe they think the pain is good – what she deserves, making them go to all this trouble.

She had flinched a little at the sound of the razor, because it had been unexpected. She hadn’t known why she was here. A heavy gloved hand had come down on her shoulder, silent warning. They’d run the razor across her head, and her hair, big dark ringlets, had fallen to her smocked shoulders, to the floor. One of the assistants had swept it up. Then they’d fixed her head in place, to keep her still. She hadn’t flinched at all at the sound of the drill, because she’d expected that one.

It makes sense. It’s easier to reteach than unteach. Easier to start from a blank slate than try to salvage what obedience is left in her, because they’ll never be able to make her perfectly compliant again. Not without removing every memory she has of ever having been free and human. This is a factory reset.

It makes sense and it knocks the breath out of her when it settles over her.

The walls in this room are clean white, slightly reflective. She can see the light they’re shining into her head, but not her face, and not their faces. Moving shadows. She’s dying, effectively, isn’t she? What is a man but the sum of his memories? What is left of her when everything she is is erased? Nothing. Dead.

She knows it won’t help, but tied down, head-blind, she has no avenues of resistance. So she wills it to work, anyway, and she thinks hard, like if she just concentrates enough, her memories will stay with her, despite it all.

First of her name, and the woman who gave it to her, who touched her hair and smiled warmly and called her Annie, she looked like an Annie, curly hair, so pretty. How rebellious, to be named. How powerful.

And then of Billie, of the Holiday variety. In the car with the woman who named her, in the deep darkness of the nighttime Mojave desert, __his eager heart of mine was singing_ ¹ on the car radio. In the kitchen (“my kitchen, your kitchen,” ² poetry books on the shelf in the hall) and she’s cooking, reducing down wine and lemon juice in a saucepan, chicken frying on the other stove burner. _like bubbles in a glass of champagne _³ from the front room. Strong hand – warm, comforting, confident – on her hip, pulling her away from the stove and close to him. Her bare feet on linoleum. The smell of food and his cologne in conflict.

Bile rises in her throat. Ricardo, Ricardo, how badly she tries not to think of him. How she waited for what must have been weeks, waited for alarm bells to sound, for the compound to go on lock down, because the Rangers were here, Ricardo was here, he wouldn’t forget about her, wouldn’t let them take her.

And how the alarms never sounded. 

Everything she’d felt for him, all the admiration, the love, the trust – it all twisted into anger, or grief, or something more complex that she didn’t have a name for. Something buried in her chest that hurt and hurt, worse than anything they could ever do to her.

Rubber gloved hand on her shoulder again. No words spoken. No words needed. Stop thinking, it says. Accept what is happening.

She retreats from Ricardo like a hand over a stove burner. It will be any second now. He left her to this fate. If she’s going to go, it’s with Lady Day, and not him. How did it go? _Baby, I don’t cry over you? _⁴

–

Annie punches him square in the jaw with surprising accuracy and strength for someone swinging blindly, and he lets go as quickly as he scooped her up, falls back on his elbow and rubs his race with his other hand. But he doesn’t look hurt or angry, just concerned. A little scared.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I – you started thrashing and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, not fucking that.” Lying on her side, she tucks her head against her chest, presses it against the sheets now damp with sweat, and she breathes. Chemical laundry detergent, fake linen scent, a little. Mostly Ricardo. Her heart’s hammering as hard as it can and she’s near paralyzed, waiting for the panic to recede, swallowing down vomit.

“Are you alright? Are you going to be sick?”

“Just give me a minute, will you?”

And he does. He falls silent and lets her breathe, until her arms start working again, until her spine stops tingling in panic. The feeling is coming up again, that hurt, that ache, how he let it happen. She has to remind herself, patiently, like the mother of a fussing toddler, that he didn’t know, that he would’ve tried to find her, and would’ve gotten himself killed trying, had he known. And that she would have suffered either way.

And she did suffer. They hadn’t been able to reset her. They never acknowledged it. Never theorized why, at least not within her earshot. They just closed her back up and reprogrammed her the hard way.

She doesn’t – she can’t – dwell on it. She shoves the memories down, blinks back tears. She feels Ricardo’s hand on her ribs, tentative this time, gentle and warm, and when she doesn’t shove him off, it slips to her back, skates up it, across scars and silky tattoos. And it helps, somehow. Despite the myriad emotional conflicts when she’s around him, the simplicity of being there and being loved by him… helps.

Annie finally looks up at him, and he smiles, just a little, soft and genuine. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she whispers. “I – I –”

“I know,” he nods. “I kind of deserved it.” 

“You didn’t. You were trying to help.”

“Hey, I’ve taken worse hits trying to help people I care way less about.”

She nudges his shoulder. “That doesn’t make me feel any better, stupid.”

Ricardo laughs. “Right. Sorry.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead, right between her eyebrows, and when he pulls back, it isn’t far.

**Author's Note:**

> works referenced: 
> 
> ¹ billie holiday, lover come back to me
> 
> ² anne sexton, for john who begs me not to enquire further 
> 
> ³ billie holiday, you go to my head
> 
> ⁴ billie holiday, baby i don’t cry over you


End file.
